README for data products from the XMM-Newton Follow-Up Survey

This disk contains the reduced and calibrated images, weight maps and flag maps, as well as single passband catalogs derived from the image files, of the XMM-Newton Follow-Up Survey (XSF). The XFS was carried out by the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) Team in collaboration with the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre and a team from the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie (AIfA), Bonn.
A private extension of this survey was conducted jointly by that team at the AIfA and the AIP, Potsdam. For this extension, the same kind of data are also provided on this disk. Permission to use these data is granted provided that the two publications (Dietrich et al. 2006, A&A 449, 837; Dietrich et al. 2007, A&A 470, 821) describing them are cited in any work making use of these data.

For several fields and filters more than one final coaddition is available. These correspond to different quality selection criteria imposed on the frames entering the coaddition process. These coadditions are identified by a four digit identifier. Its meaning is described in Dietrich (2006, PhD thesis, University of Bonn, Germany), where more details on the data reduction are given.
The selection conditions can also be found in the FITS headers of the coadded frames in the CONDx headers.

The photometric calibration is provided on a best effort basis only. Although care was exercised to use only photometric nights for calibration a clear judgement of the observing conditions was not always possible. A few difficult cases are discussed in Dietrich et al. (2006), but the majority of problems can be found in the private extension data observed in only one or two passbands.
Note that for fields observed in at least three passbands, good relative photometry between passbands can be achieved by matching the observed stellar sequence in a color-color diagram to the expected one. This was, however, not done for the data provided here.

All questions concerning these data should be directed to Joerg Dietrich (jdietric@eso.org).



last change 2009-11-11